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IT’S HALLOWEEN!

Los Angeles, Washington & More Trick-or-Treat Capitals

The Northeast is still cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy, but that won’t stop millions of kiddies from going door-to-door to score some serious sweet loot. The Daily Beast crunches the numbers to find the 13 best cities for trick-or-treating this Halloween.

10.31.12 8:45 AM ET

For a lot of kids, Halloween is just as important as the winter holidays. After all, there are countless pounds of sweets to be had, absolutely free. While most parents aren’t going to pick up and leave based on the best places to trick-or-treat, some kids are lucky enough to already live in one of America’s trick-or-treat capitals.

To find them, The Daily Beast looked at more than 150 metropolitan areas, accounting for the number of kids up to age 14 as a percentage of the total population, using Census data; housing density—because the more homes, the less ground kids have to cover—also using Census data; violent crime per 100,000 people, as a measure of each area’s overall safety, using FBI data; and each area’s score on the most recent Gallup Well-Being Index, because citizens who are happy and healthy are more likely to open their homes, and their candy bags.

And because Hurricane Sandy is on the nation’s collective mind, and because no one wants to trick-or-treat while soggy and cold, we ranked the top 50 out of our initial pool of metros and then took into account the average temperature in October and the average precipitation in October, to come up with our final 13, with data from Weatherbase.